Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

First off: a bit of a format change. I had been using a library procured version of this book in hardcover, but I kept racking up fines. I returned that version but am now working off of a PDF that doesn't have the same page numbering. I'll work toward getting a different version, but for this week, we're just going with the first few pages of chapter 4. I make it a point to never learn anything about the people I'm a fan of. Nothing, zero. I don't want to know, I just want to enjoy the things that they make without having to worry about their personal views on things. Did Kurt Smith (of Tears for Fears) support Brexit? No idea. Did Britney Spears vote for Biden? Couldn't tell you and I willfully stay agnostic about their positions (also it's a fun playlist to combine the two as Tears for Fears and Britney Spears...it kind of rhymes). Think of  Paul Ryan's shock that Rage Against the Machine had political views. The old adage about not meeting your heroe

 There's a point where someone writing a work loses the thread. They don't necessarily run out of things to say, but they lose that initial umph that was motivating their earlier work. If you've ever tried to bullshit your way through a paper for a class that didn't matter, or even worse, given a presentation that you remembered all of the facts for but can't string together the point. We've all been there. I've seen it from both ends as a student trying to muddle a defense in Philosophy of Language, to the student two years ago who had all of the incriminating evidence on FIFA but couldn't put it together the right way.  In my case, as a student, it was just a course that I couldn't get my brain around. I knew the material enough to pass the tests but it was just difficult to formulate why Wittgenstein's position was so important. At least, however, I had the correct premise.  That brings us to this week's selection, a much longer one than u

A lifetime ago, I had a student confront me about 9/11. This happened while Bush was at the end of his second term, and we still didn’t know all of the details about the event and the conspiracy theories were just loving the redactions from the 9/11 commission. This student began asking me about the towers falling faster than gravity–which I still don’t know they think even with an inside job that happened. She then asked about Mossad and then how there were no Jews that died…and I cut her off. For the former part, I said that yes, Mossad has done some dirt. That however isn’t relevant unless you can connect Mossad to literally any part of the 9/11 attacks. As for the latter part I said that you really never want to finish that sentence because it makes you anti-Semitic. “How, I’m just asking how no Jews died in the 9/11 attacks? “Because the implication, the direct implication is that they were warned, and who else but ‘ their own people’  would warn them? It’s not a question, it’s a

I want to begin this section by summing up my background with regard to knowledge of banking, finance, and economics. I've never taken economics, accounting, or business course. My knowledge of economics comes from reading Adam Smith--cover to cover and some commentary on his writing; most notably from the book "The Worldly Philosophers." I read several books on economics after the 2008 financial collapse, I've seen the Enron documentary "the Smartest Guys in the Room" because that was one of the very few things available on one of the HD channels when those were new. I teach business ethics and have learned a great deal about how business and economies relate from all of the research that I have done to prepare for that course. I also have a considerable understanding of how people like Gary Allen think economics works from all of the conspiracy bullshit I have to read and all of the Ron Paul Libertarians I've dealt with that think "money" is

 New chapter title: The Money Manipulators This is appropriate because the first thing we begin with is discussing history professors and their textbooks. Allen begins, " Many college history professors tell their charges that the books they will be using in the class are 'objective.' But stop to ask yourself: Is it possible to write a history book without a particular point of view?" First off: bullshit. No one teaches a history class and says, this book is just plain facts. It simply doesn't happen. An objective history book would be a date, a time (if possible), and then the event that happened. The battle of Savo Island took place on August 8th, 1942, it involved these sides with this many on each side, and the Japanese Navy claimed victory. That's what an objective historical report looks like. That little window on the side of the wiki entry is the objective entry. Anything else and you begin to enter biases into it. Every historian going back to Herodot

Page 34 ended with this gem, "Jefferson knew that if the government were not enslaved the people would be."--that's a fun claim about Thomas Jefferson.  Moving forward, and still waiting for those Socialist policies of Richard Nixon to be enumerated, we move to a fake coffee sit down with the "man in the street." This is never a good sign because what always follows is the strawest of strawmen or the easiest setup for a softball. Even the book isn't disingenuous to pretend that this isn't going to be one of those things, " he might say: 'the one thing that I can never figure out is why all these very, very wealthy people like the Kennedy's, the Fords, the Rockefellers and others are for socialism..."  The fake quote comments how these families would have the most to lose from Socialism while this fictitious person has the least to lose but is against it. A lot is going on here, but most notably, it's the appeal to "common sense